There is nothing wrong with you

For decades I searched for the answer to my life’s problems. I didn’t know my purpose, I was single and I hated my day job. I felt stuck but was always open to explore inside what I needed to fix to make my life better.

The journey started out hopeful, but the more I dug into my past family history, my relationships with my parents, siblings, romantic interests and bosses, the more problems I seemed to uncover. I was told that I had all these wounds from the past that needed to be cleared for me to have a normal life.

My friends would recommend the latest magical cure and was very hopeful that each time it would help. I felt better for a while but then quickly lost all momentum when I had some minor upset that brings a person into a feeling of isolation and hurt. I felt like I would never be “healed” and that there was something wrong with me.

For years I navigated along the roller-coaster of my life, still searching for a partner, a career and peace of mind. I felt as though I was going crazy, that I couldn’t be in my own skin anymore. Hopelessness started to set in and I was exhausted from my constant fixing and repairing my damaged psyche.

I started to awaken from my almost zombie-like effort to “improve myself” mission when I realized that I was using personal development to feel better like a drug. If I did the technique correctly, then I would be good and worthy. When things didn’t fall into place, something was wrong with me. I felt like an old jalopy that keeps requiring repairs at the shop.

The ego-mind will tell you that you aren’t enough, that you’d be better in a relationship rather than single or if you found the right job, or your purpose and made more money. All those things are great, but should they be used to measure how good you are inside?

If you are waiting for external results to make you feel better about yourself, then you are falling into the same ego trap that prevents you from having joy in your life. You falsely believe that something out there can make you better.

If you continue this thinking eventually the ego-mind will tell you that you aren’t enough until you get the breakthrough, until you have deeper insight or you stop falling back to fear or old patterns. This personal development perfectionism can infiltrate the process of growth and pull you back down to being materialistic about your enlightenment.

You see many experts out there who feed this lie about needing healing. They tell you that if you just do this technique it will magically solve all life’s problems and you will be happy forever. Just one click, a few taps, one mantra, done. When you don’t get the man or the money, you beat yourself up and think you are wrong. Then, you move on to the next hot technique hungry to find your bliss.

If you approach your personal development as a fixing tool, like taking your psyche into a repair shop, you will never be satisfied. You may temporarily feel a high from a retreat or a class but it doesn’t last. Why, because you are starting off with a false assumption – that you need to be fixed in the first place.

There is nothing wrong with you.

The reason you don’t have what you want is because you haven’t learned how to use your mind to create. You don’t need to clear things from your mind or heal wounds, just understand how the mind creates and take the reins back from ego that is driving your life on auto-pilot.

Your ego doesn’t need to be fixed; it is a necessary function that helps you survive. All you need to do to have more joy in your life is access the higher mind beyond the ego – your true self. You have to stop believing you are just your thoughts.

Your true self can never be harmed, injured, burned or destroyed. Instead of trying to re-arrange furniture in your ego lower mind, you can transcend to the higher mind to see that you are already enlightened. You have an ego that prevents you from seeing this clearly.

When you make mistakes, have a negative day or have a temporary setback, it doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong or you have blocks. This is normal. Your ego will resist and without the ego’s resistance you wouldn’t grow. These obstacles are a gift to bring you closer to your true self.

The proper way to use personal development is not as a medicine cabinet but as a way to understand your mind so you can use it as an ally to navigate the journey of your life. The more you learn and accept all parts of yourself, the easier life becomes.

If you want to have the love, the money, the lifestyle and the career of your dreams, you must be willing to face the parts of life you are running from including tough times, heartaches and so-called failures. If you stop trying to fix them but learn from them you can truly grow into the person who has it all.

JillJuly 28, 2015 at 8:16 pm

GratefulJuly 28, 2015 at 11:30 pm

This article is spot on – and so very much needed at this time.

Many may need ‘healing’ from undergoing self-help programs, therapies and processes aimed at ‘healing/fixing’ past ‘wounds’ and believing we/our mind is ‘wounded’. The article is spot on in identifying that such approaches based on a traditional psychology/medical model based on ‘fixing/healing’ ‘wounds’ give a temporary high or sense of relief only for an individual to find that it doesn’t work long term and they may need to keep signing up for another program or therapy or workshop or process, to keep getting their past ‘wounds’ ‘fixed’ repeatedly, which in fact may be reinforcing and entrenching the identification with ‘wounds’.

The other aspect of this article which is so very important is the need to have respect for the purpose and function of the EGO mind; the mind/EGO is not meant to be overridden bypassed or ‘fixed/healed’. It is here to serve us and support us in this physical existence. The invitation is to learn how to work with the EGO/mind; not bypass or override it (such as with ‘spiritual bypassing’).

Contrary to some teachings, the EGO/left brain thinking mind itself is thus not necessarily to be equated with being ‘wounded’.

This is an important article that clarifies many misconceptions circulating. Thank you for writing it.